Behavior > 1st episode: Stop Smoking

Every time I go to Tunisia in the summer, I get hit with a thick cloud of smoke right from the exit door of the airplane. You would think that with jet-fuel still burning in reservoirs, people would be smart and turn off their lighters or burry their cigarette, hell no!!!

By the time you clear customs and exit the passenger area, your lungs are filled with poison, combined with heat and smog from the outside; your chances to an asthma attack grow like never before.

In North-America, entire cities are going smoke-free, and sooner, selected cities in Canada will ban open-air smoking all together unless smokers sit within a certain distance from non smokers. This is truly CIVILIZATION!!!

I don’t mind living, working and dealing with smokers, as long as they go KABOUM themselves ONLY without taking down with them second hand smokers or a generation of kids.

Smokers, why don’t you get it? Studies after studies have shown that lung cancer is a direct consequence of heavy, light and second hand smoking. Why do you keep polluting the air around? Give me one damn benefit of smoking, and I’ll turn smoker next day.

Why do people have to die, and bankrupt their public health system and their families because of some stupid trend? I can understand old generation smokers, they didn’t have a clue about death rates / side effects related to smoking, besides, during the 40-50s smoking was considered trendy, hot and cool. But nowadays? What’s hot about it? Why youngsters and young adults still do it despite all the awareness, the knowledge and all the talk around it?

Going back to Tunisia, I think it’s time to start banning (and enforcing) smoking in public and covered areas, yet I’m not sure if that will ever happen since most of the future generation, for instance future lawmakers, are smokers themselves :-(

Last year, I went to this ‘soit-disant’ hot café somewhere in El Manar neighborhood. I can not even remember the name of the café, coz they were like 100s of them, one next to the other, serving the same thing, and featuring the same clientele. Aside from the stereotypes that I was quick to develop by looking at the crowds, I was appalled by the number of smokers, ALL of them were smokers, i swear ALL of them.

I’ve been labeled few times as intolerant because of my stance on cigarettes. To those, I say please understand (so tempted to say 'go to hell') that my health and the health of my family comes before your high-society branded and gestured cigarette.

Smokers, please think about it again!!! If not for yourself, think out of respect of those surrounding you, if you don’t have respect for the others, then you’re probably a liability to society and should not be dealt with.

Worth mentioning however that some smokers did catch up with some good manners lately and now they do ask for permission prior to igniting that piece of crap, so there is hope !!!